


Floral Delight

by followmetoyourdoom



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, but i mean ultimately is happy and cute and fluffy, cute fluff, maybe a lil angsty near the end?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 06:42:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8361517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/followmetoyourdoom/pseuds/followmetoyourdoom
Summary: Flowers are a new concept to Shay, so who better to introduce her to them than Hunk? Who knows, maybe Hunk will learn a thing or two as well.





	

**Author's Note:**

> om so it's been a while since i've posted anything, sorry i've just been having trouble writing. This has been a wip for about 4 months now and I'm so glad I was finally able to finish it and I hope I did the pairing, my favourite pairing in VLD, justice ^-^ A certain scene was inspired by [this lovely art](http://doodlebonez.tumblr.com/post/145843152322) and indeed is the reason I started writing this in the first place, so thank you.

Faint sunlight shone across the Balmera, a new day bringing farewells from new, but treasured friends. But Hunk - the yellow paladin, who always thought with his heart before his mind - had one last thing he had to do.

He left the castle with a "be right back!" and ran to the Balmerans' temporary settlement.

Placing his hand on the naturally hollowed out cave wall where Shay's family were staying, he reached, just like Shay herself had taught him, into the heart of the Balmera, and to the people that now walked atop it. 

As Rax walked out, Hunk spoke, "She's not in there, is she?"

"No. Shay left for the stars."

"The stars… Oh!" Hunk clicked his fingers, "You mean she's on that hilltop,  _ looking _ at the stars. Well at the sky by this time."

Rax nodded, "Yes. Though she dreams of more."

"She does?!" Hunk said excitedly before quickly realised how bad that must sound to her brother, "Uh I mean…"

"It is fine, too adventurous is she to stay in one place for long." He smiled softly and placed his hand on the Balmera. "Go. Shay awaits."

A quick nod from Hunk and he was off once more, practically running up the hill.

Shay’s head popped up over the hill as she felt him approach.

"Hunk! Glad I am that you are here," she called out, "come see."

His curiosity growing, Hunk jogged the last few steps to find Shay knelt on the ground in front of a new type of crystal. This one was pale pink in colour and almost seemed to be unfurling itself.

"It's like a flower," Hunk said softly.

"A... flower?"

Hunk hummed in response, "On my planet, flowers grow from the ground, like crystals do here. But there's some ah, subtle differences. For one they're soft, not hard."

Shay thought for a moment, trying to imagine what these 'flowers' could look like, but alas she could not. There was no flora on this nor any other Balmera.

Noticing the frown that appeared on Shay's face, Hunk decided to barrel through with his idea. "Y'know," he began, "you could always come with us, with me. I could show you flowers and more stars and everything. I could show you the whole universe."

There was no response.

"Shay..?"

"While I would very much like the idea," she said quietly, "I cannot leave my family behind."

"Oh…" Now it was Hunk's turn to think. He quickly backtracked, returning to the topic at hand, "What if I brought the flowers to you?"

Shay's face lit up, "You would do that?"

"Of course. I'm sure there's a planet with flowers somewhere near here I could get some from. Coran should be able to bring up an analysis of the closest planets, hopefully there'll be one that Zarkon has left alone."

The question was if he had time to go there and get back.

Still, he promised to do what he could and jogged back to the castle of lions. As it turned out, there was indeed a nearby peaceful planet which housed a grand variety of non-toxic flora. Hunk was ecstatic.

"How long will it take me to get there?"

Coran twirled his moustache thoughtfully, "Shouldn't take too long. A couple of hours by my calculations."

"When're we leaving the Balmera?"

"Later this sun's cycle, five hours at most. You'd better get going if you want to get back in time."

Hunk nodded and ran for his lion, almost running into Pidge on the way.

"What's the rush?"

"I need to get some flowers for Shay," he said as he dashed past.

A nod, "Ah, such a loving boyfriend," Pidge teased.

The inevitable call of "I'm not her boyfriend!" echoed back down the hall and the green paladin snorted. Sure he wasn't.

Minutes later, he shot out of the castle and towards a nearby planet, Coran having entered the planet's coordinates into the yellow lion's system remotely. The royal advisor had also supplied a rather large bowl of water to keep the flowers from dying before Hunk even got back to the Balmera. 

All Hunk had to do was sit back and wait. 

Simple.

"Yellow, how long until we get there?"

The yellow lion brought up an ETA showing around an hour and a half. Damn, not even close.

Hunk pursed his lips, "Can you bring up a list of the flora on the planet?" He then spent the remainder of the flight searching through and picking out the perfect flowers, pinpointing their locations on a planetary map.

When they arrived, Hunk left his lion hidden, just in case the planet wasn't as friendly as previously thought - Coran had gotten that wrong before.

The flower locations showed up on his visor, making collecting the flowers rather easy. 

By the time he had finished, Hunk had enough flowers to make a dozens of bouquets. He laid their stalks in the bowl of water, rearranging them to his liking, and then set a course back to the Balmera.

He was halfway there when he got a call from Coran, "We'll be leaving soon, you need to hurry things up."

"I thought you said five hours?"

"I did," Coran agreed, "five hours ago."

Hunk frowned, had it really taken that much longer? He glanced back at the flowers, the sheer number of them filling up the cockpit. Maybe he had taken too long.

"Okay, can you ask Allura to open a wormhole for me then?"

"She's still recovering," came the reply. "Just try to get back here as quickly as you can. You might have to catch up with us."

Hunk thought for a second, "That isn't a problem." His lion could find the castle easy enough. After all, Lance's had found it from halfway across the galaxy. What would a couple of hours extra on the Balmera hurt?

When the yellow lion arrived, it was clear that the others had already set off.

Almost as soon as Hunk exited his lion, flowers still safely inside while he found out where Shay was, the Balmeran in question ran up to him.

"I thought you had left for good," she murmured as she hugged him. "I wanted to at least get the chance to bid you farewell."

Hunk chuckled as she drew back, "I said I'd come back."

Shay smiled, then noticed something quite peculiar sticking out from behind Hunk's ear. He lifted a hand when she pointed it out to him and untangled the object from his hair. 

It was a small, dainty, lily like flower. A light pink in colour which faded to white near the centre where several stigma sprouted, the pollen atop them a strange purple colour as opposed to the usual orange tone of pollen found on Earth.

Hunk presented it to Shay with a flourish, practically glowing as she happily took it from him and… ate it. 

Shocked, Hunk didn't have time to respond to this unexpected occurrence before he quickly ran back to his lion. This left a very worried looking Shay. 

Had she offended him in some way? Was his gift not edible? It had  _ looked _ edible.

Her worries were soon washed away however when Hunk returned with an armful of flowers, each and every one different in each and every way: some were small, some were large; some had many petals, some had few; some were bright colours of the sunset, while others were shades of the sky at dusk.

"It's a good job these are all non-toxic," he joked as he handed them over to her. "You can eat them if you want to. It's… unusual, but perfectly fine with me."

"These are… flowers?" Shay asked, realising with a start what the first gift must have been.

Hunk nodded as Shay touched one with a claw. 

She gasped softly, "It's so soft! And yet…" she touched another, "this one is not so soft."

"They're all different," Hunk confirmed, "I picked them out specially."

Shay grinned once more and threw her arms around him, the flowers held carefully in one hand. "I shall miss you," she told him, taking a small bite out of one of the softer flowers behind his back. It tasted quite different from the first too.

"No more than I'll miss you," he told her. 

When they broke apart, Hunk smiled as he noticed the small bite mark in one of the flowers.

"I have lots more, so feel free to eat those."

Shay stared at the flowers apprehensively.

"Just eat them," Hunk said kindly, "I know you want to."

"Very well, if I have your permission."

She did of course, not need his permission, not as far as Hunk was concerned. However, Shay was still bothered about the earlier incident and didn't want to accidentally insult Hunk by eating the gifts he had spent five hours collecting.

Shay looked at each and every flower before she ate it, listening as Hunk compared it to one similar on Earth. 

Before long she was down to the last few. "I should go get the rest." Hunk pointed at his lion. Shay nodded and watched him board his lion, happily munching away on an hibiscus like flower.

She almost choked on it when she saw how many flowers he was bringing out. 

Piles upon piles of flowers were placed neatly on the ground, and Hunk just kept going back inside for more. And… each and every single one was different.

Hunk eventually walked back towards Shay, his cockpit finally empty of the alien flowers.

"There are so many…" Shay said with wonder.

"There's about four hundred thousand types of different flowers on Earth," Hunk told her, "the planet I visited had less, about two hundred thousand going off Coran's info, and I could only cover a small area, but I hope these are enough?"

When Shay said nothing, Hunk continued shailky.

"I collected some of the soil too," he pointed at a small box next to the flowers, "so hopefully you can grow them here, that way you can have flowers whenever you want. You'll need to take a cutting from the stems and place them in water until they grow roots but after that you should be able to-" Hunk stopped abruptly as Shay pressed her forehead to his.

The feeling was overwhelming, it was like talking to the Balmera but on a deeper, more profound level. It was almost as if she was connecting their quintessence, connecting their very existence together.

Shay stepped back, and Hunk almost fell forwards if not for her strong arms catching him.

"Are you okay?" she asked with concern.

Righting himself, Hunk replied, "Yeah I just, wow, that was- I didn't expect that, I mean it was very nice and very different and I liked it, I just didn't really know what to do. That's not what we do on Earth, well we do touch foreheads but it generally doesn't result in that and… what, what was that?" he finally asked.

Shay laughed softly and took his hand in hers. "It is much like speaking to the Balmera," she explained, "or to each other like when we touch hands, but it is more inti…" she faltered, the word getting stuck in her throat.

"More what?" Hunk prompted, squeezing her fingers.

But Shay could not say it. "What do you do on Earth?" she asked instead, hoping Hunk wouldn't mind the change in subject.

He blinked, but answered her question. "It's called kissing, at least I think that would be the equivalent… It shows that you care about the other person. Or it's one of the ways to show that." He scratched the back of his head with his free hand and shrugged. "I don't really like kissing too much. I prefer the forehead touching thing. Could… could we do that again?"

In reply, Shay pulled him towards her. 

They stayed like that for a while, forehead to forehead, hands clasped together. They shared the feelings they couldn't say out loud, their thoughts about the future; they shared themselves. 

All too soon they were interrupted by Coran talking to Hunk through his communicator. 

The yellow paladin blinked a few times, as if coming out of a trance, and forgot who he was for a moment. His eyes fell on Shay, happiness radiating from her face. He smiled in returned and gave her hand a brief squeeze.

"I should get this," he told her. Hunk waited until she nodded before turning his attention to Coran.

"-been waiting for almost-"

"Coran, start again I was um, distracted."

Pidge's voice could be heard faintly in the background, "Probably kissing his giiiirlfriend."

"We don't do that!" Hunk replied with a yelp, no longer denying the state of his and Shay's relationship.

Coran shushed the pair, then continued talking to Hunk. "As I was saying, we've been waiting for you for almost two of your Earth hours now. We need to warp and we can't unless you're here with us."

Hunk sighed, "Alright, I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Roger that," and Coran was gone.

"Are you sure you don't want to come with me?" Hunk asked one last time.

Shay shook her head sadly, "I cannot. However I do have the communicator your princess bestowed upon me before she and the others left. Perhaps with that I can find you."

"Perhaps," Hunk repeated. "I'll still come back to visit you. Y'know, in between saving the universe and all." He sounded so disheartened.

"I would like that." Shay told him, briefly pressing her forehead to his so he could feel how much she appreciated it.

Hunk thanked her in return; and then all too quickly he was back in his lion, waving at Shay though she could not see him through the lion's eyes. Despite this, she still waved, as if she knew anyway.

The flight to the castle's location seemed to take forever and Hunk found himself falling asleep.

He woke with a start when he slipped out of his chair, tumbling under the control panel. Grumbling, he started to crawl out, but stopped as something caught his eye.

It was a flower. 

Small and dainty, and a pale pink: the same lily like flower he'd first given to Shay.

Somehow it had gotten lost in the far corner of the lion's cockpit, and had even been crushed slightly, one of the petals torn and hanging limp.

Hunk cradled it gently in his hands, the memory of Shay and their connection fresh in his mind. He rested it in the now flowerless water bowl, a few stray petals from the other flowers drifting across the surface, disturbed by the sudden movement of the water. 

Hopefully that would be enough to keep it alive until he returned to the castle of lions.

It was not.

By the time Hunk's lion landed inside the castle, the flower was limp and lifeless. But it did not matter, for soon upon the Balmera, hundreds of tiny pink flowers would bloom, cared for and watched over by Shay as she waited and dreamed of stars.

Eventually Hunk would see the flowers again. The flowers and Shay.


End file.
